Nadya Okamoto Explains What She Learned as a Candidate for Cambridge City Council

Running! is a Teen Vogue series on getting involved in the government. In this op-ed, 19-year-old Nadya Okamoto, Founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit organization PERIOD and one of Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21 Class of 2017, explains why she decided to run for office in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2017.

I’m Nadya, a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard College. Last year, I unexpectedly decided to embark on what would be one of the most terrifying and exhausting experiences of my life: running for office.

My commitment to Cambridge was very unconventional for a candidate for local office. I’m not from the area, nor had I established my roots and family there: I was born in New York City and grew up between there and Portland, Oregon, where I went to high school. Growing up without strong ties to extended family, I survived abuse and experienced housing instability. We moved around so much during the first decade of my life, I was scared to call anywhere my home in fear that it would be stripped away from me as soon as I became attached.

But Cambridge was one of the few constants. My godmother and her husband have lived there since before I was born, so when I was growing up, we would visit them multiple times each year. The city and their house provided a home for my family even in times when we didn’t have one of our own or didn’t feel like we had a safe home to go back to. My interest in Cambridge politics in the first place came from an unwavering motivation to protect the concept of home for all Cambridge residents – regardless of race, religion, socioeconomic status, or age.

In 2016, I downloaded publicly accessible reports that I found on city-related matters after noticing visible gentrification in the city. From income equality and housing policy, to climate-change risk and the arts in Cambridge, I started to read. I ended up with a hugely long Google document with facts that angered or motivated me regarding the inequality in the city, notes on what city councilors were doing, and ideas on what I thought the Cambridge city council could be doing better.

For the next few months, I just kept researching and meeting with people around the city to learn more. Every time I learned new information — like how the median market price of a single-family home in Cambridge is over $1.5 million, but more than 45% of Cambridge public school students are low-income — my commitment to getting involved heightened. I had no intention of running for office until I started to hear comments like, “If you have so many ideas, why don’t you just run yourself?”

In early March 2017, after I said (for the first time out loud) that I would be open to running, a friend introduced me to Nadeem Mazen, one of the younger, more progressive city councilors. Over lunch, when I told him about my interest in city council specifically, he asked me “Why don’t you run now?”

I assembled a campaign team: my friends, the badass young women and men in my life who inspired me with their work ethic, passion, and generosity, and somehow convinced them to take a risky leap with me as I ran for office — even on top of college. I learned how to file for my candidacy, and the general structure of a political campaign. Soon enough, my team and I found ourselves living together in a two-bedroom apartment that we found on Craigslist.

We had anywhere from 4 to 11 people staying in the apartment at any given time – all bunking together every night. Practically none of us knew how to cook, and for the whole summer we ate cereal, quesadillas, eggs, frozen food, and green smoothies.

There is a common saying in the campaign world: “If you’re not tired, you’re not doing something right.” I traveled frequently – continuing to lead my organization, PERIOD, traveling for speaking jobs and conferences and leaving the team to run a campaign with a sometimes-absent candidate. Campaigning is exhausting because you can always be doing more, so you feel like you are not doing enough. With practically no break between the rigorous demands of freshman year at Harvard and the campaign, we were tired.

There were two major things I underestimated when we jumped in: how much pushback we would get from residents and people all over the United States for even considering a run as a 19-year-old Asian-American student, and alternatively, how much national support we would get for those same reasons. Every day that we canvassed, volunteers would come back with stories of doors that were slammed in their faces. No matter how many friends and family members told me to ignore mean comments, if they would come from other Harvard or MIT students, I would keep myself up at night reading every message (and then Facebook stalking the senders).

At the same time, we continued to realize that we were a small part of a larger national movement for young women and people of color in politics. As an endorsed candidate of Run for Something, a national organization supporting young, progressive candidates, we received private messages and social media shout-outs of support on a daily basis from people all over the world.

On a personal level, my candidacy swallowed every aspect of my life. My social life in school suffered. I tried to attend parties with friends, but sometimes left quickly after other students would pull out their phones to take Snapchat videos as people yelled, “Nadya for City Council.” I would open social media to mindlessly scroll through my feed only to see that a peer sent me a mean-spirited message. I felt so incredibly alone. Did they not realize that I was also a 19-year-old with insecurities just like them?

I was so tired. But I felt I could tell no one because I wanted to appear strong, confident, and capable.

I was so confident in my platform and the reasons I was running, but the campaign took a toll on my confidence. The questions that I got over social media and in-person made me start to ask myself, with anger and disappointment, Who do you think you are? Why don’t you just focus on school and be a normal college kid?

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There were days when I felt wrong in every aspect of who I was. Both supporters and those who opposed my candidacy found a way to constantly point out something I wasn’t doing right. The ONLY solution to getting through it was to just be myself and do whatever felt most authentic and comfortable.

I cherish every conversation that I had with residents at their door. I lived for those who would take the time to share their stories with me and open up about their concerns about health care, public safety, affordable housing, or climate change – and I would take furious notes on my clipboard to make sure I didn’t miss anything they were saying. It is for these reasons, and the relationships I formed with many residents over the campaign trail, and with the students who got involved with my campaign, that I have absolutely no regrets about running.

I did not win, but my work does not stop here. I am sharing my experience of running for office candidly, the good and bad, because I think that we need and want more young and progressive candidates running for office. I dream of a future where “too young” will not be a phrase associated with anyone who wants to get involved with trying to better their community. But to achieve that dream, we need young people to act and others to support them doing so.